Israeli warplanes battered Lebanon today, killing at least 32
people, and more Hezbollah rockets hit the Israeli city of Haifa,
with no sign that diplomacy would halt the week-old conflict any
time soon.

Nine family members, including children, were killed and four
wounded in an air strike on their house in the village of Aitaroun.
Four people were killed in other strikes in the south.

A truck carrying medical supplies donated by the United Arab
Emirates was hit and its driver killed on the Beirut-Damascus
highway, the Health Ministry said.

An air raid on a Lebanese army barracks in the Jamhour area east of
Beirut killed 11 Lebanese soldiers, including four officers, and
wounded 30.

Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group backed by Syria and Iran, said one
of its fighters had been killed, but gave no details.

Up to six rockets slammed into Haifa, Israel's third-largest city
and now a favoured target for Hezbollah. No casualties were
reported. A rocket salvo killed eight people in Haifa on
Sunday.

Israel's army refused to rule out a ground invasion only six years
after it ended a 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.

"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground
forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will," Moshe
Kaplinsky, Israel's deputy army chief, told Israel Radio.

He said the offensive, launched after Hezbollah fighters seized two
Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July
12, would end within weeks. Israel needed more time to complete
"very clear goals", Kaplinsky added.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a bigger, better armed
and more robust international force to stabilise southern Lebanon
and buy time for the Lebanese Government to disarm Hezbollah
guerillas.

Shrugging off US and Israeli reluctance, Annan said he expected
European troops to join the proposed force in a bid to end the
fighting and prevent a wider Middle East conflagration.

Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have urged the UN
Security Council to deploy a security force in Lebanon but Israel
says it is too early to discuss it and Washington has questioned
how it could stop Hezbollah from attacking Israel.

"It is urgent that the international community acts to make a
difference on the ground," Annan said in Brussels, suggesting a
force that would operate differently from toothless UN peacekeepers
who have patrolled south Lebanon since 1978.

"The force will be larger, the way I see it, much larger than the
2000-man force we have there," Annan said.

He was speaking after talks with European Commission President Jose
Manuel Barroso, who said some European Union member states were
willing to contribute troops.

It showed 86 per cent of Israelis believed the army's attacks on
Lebanon were justified.

Thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon, some by road to Syria, others
seeking places on US and European ships after Beirut's
international airport was closed by Israeli bombardment. About
100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes to escape the violence.

Israel's campaign has killed 230 people, all but 26 of them
civilians, and inflicted the heaviest damage on Lebanon since the
1982 Israeli invasion to expel Palestinian guerillas.

Hezbollah has responded by attacking an Israeli naval vessel off
Beirut, killing four sailors, and firing hundreds of rockets across
the border, killing 12 Israelis.

Israel is also pursuing an offensive in the Gaza Strip after
Palestinian militants captured another soldier on June 25.

Lebanon has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but world
powers said any solution to the crisis must include the release of
the two soldiers. Israel also wants Hezbollah to disarm in line
with UN Security Council resolutions.

The Beirut Government is too weak and divided to force Hezbollah to
yield to such demands.

The Shiite group wants to swap the soldiers for Lebanese and Arab
prisoners in Israeli jails. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
said Hezbollah must free its two captives unconditionally.

She was speaking just hours after Public Security Minister Avi
Dichter said Israel might at some stage have to negotiate over
Lebanese prisoners held in Israel to end the crisis.
Israel pounded: Peres

Hezbollah has fired 1500 missiles and rockets into Israel from
southern Lebanon since it triggered the conflict last week, Israeli
Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said on British television on
Tuesday.

"We should stop the shooting of missiles over our heads, over our
villages and towns. They fired until now 1500 missiles and
rockets," he told Sky News.

"We are trying to control the roads ... of Lebanon because all the
12,000 missiles and rockets that they have collected came from Iran
and Syria," he said.

The veteran politician also said that Israel did not intend to send
ground troops into Lebanon, as it has done several times in the
last three decades.

He insisted that the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah is an
enemy of the Lebanese people acting independently from their
national interests, and that Israel, by contrast, wanted good
relations with the Lebanese.

"The only enemy they have is an army within an army called
Hezbollah. Lebanon is not our enemy. We have nothing to ask from
Lebanon, we have much to hope from Lebanon. We hope to live as good
neighbours," he said.

"We didn't attack Lebanon, and we are not going to organise
Lebanon, we are not going to play a role in their politics," he
said.

Quoting Israeli intelligence sources, the London specialist
magazine Jane's Defence Weekly said Hezbollah probably had
a total of 10,000 to 15,000 rockets provided by Syria and Iran.

The estimates square with claims made by the militia's leader,
Hassan Nasrallah on May 23, when he said Hezbollah held 12,000
rockets.

War just begun: Iran

Elsewhere, the Iranian Parliament Speaker said on Tuesday the
war against Israel had only just begun and there was nowhere in
Israel safe from Hezbollah attacks.

"The day has come when everybody returns home, the day when
Palestinians return home, return to the land of their origins and
its is also the day when the Israelis have to return to the
countries where they originally came from," Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel
said at a anti-Israeli gathering in the Palestine Square in central
Tehran.

Hadad-Adel, who is head of the Abadgaran (Development) party
which currently dominates parliament and of which President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad is a leading member, once again declared Iran's full
solidarity with Lebanon and Hezbollah.

"There will be no help which we would not render to Lebanon and
the resistance [Hezbollah]," the speaker said.

He compared Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with the late
leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and
said that "the Ayatollah's blood was running in Nasrallah's
veins."

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